'Valuing place in doctors’ decisions to work in remote and rural locations

Andrew Maclaren* (Corresponding Author), Louise Locock, Zoe Skea

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

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Abstract

Recruitment and retention of medical practitioners is a challenging contemporary issue for rural and remote areas. In this paper we explore the importance of what it is that doctors value in rural and remote places in their own personal, organisational, social and spatial lives. We do this drawing on original research from Scotland that explored doctors’ decisions on choosing, or not, to work in remote and rural locations. Three themes are explored: 1) Moving and staying, using place to think holistically about places beyond the language of work that recruitment and retention implies. 2) How doctors’ professional values and their capacity to enact those values change with time. 3) We consider policy landscapes interact and shape rural and remote locations as valued places for doctors to live and work. We end section three by reiterating the WHO findings that a whole-of-society approach is required to support rural and remote communities to flourish and thus encourage doctors and their families to value such places and ultimately move and stay.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)248-251
Number of pages4
JournalFuture Healthcare Journal
Volume9
Issue number3
Early online date30 Nov 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 30 Nov 2022

Keywords

  • Recruitment & Retention
  • Doctors
  • Migration
  • Values

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